Tuesday, April 11, 2017

MAD MUMMY IN PRINT PT. 3- The Devil Doctor

(Alternative cover for #7 that wasn't used.)

There were twelve issues in the Mad Mummy series, which I spent a little over two years working on. They were published digitally and you can find them on sale at iVerse. (https://digital.comicsplusapp.com/product_lines.php?publisher_id=171) Currently I am planning on a very limited print run of the series, which will be broken up into a series of three graphic novels. From time to time I get requests from fans wanting to know if there is a print edition of the books, so I’m this offer is to any of you who might be interested.

Because both the costs of printing and shipping are outrageously expensive, even offering this product at slightly above cost doesn’t always make it affordable to readers. Each of the three 92 page volumes will run $15, plus an additional $7 postage/handling.(Postage for orders outside the U.S. will have to be calculated differently.) I thought about lowering the shipping cost by sending the material Media Mail instead of priority, but tracking/insurance keep this from being a realistic option. However, you are only stuck with the shipping cost once; if you order more than one of the volumes the shipping stays the same.

What you are getting for that price is a one of kind book, because I certainly don’t have any plans to print and sell this commercially. Also, you will receive a piece of signed artwork from series from one of the thumb nailed pages or a series of panels from one of the pencil roughs. While I won’t guarantee you can pick whatever page you desire, I will try and give you options. And when the original art goes on sale, if you have purchased one of the volumes you will always get a 15% discount on anything you might be interested in.

So if any of you are interested in having any of the Mad Mummy Exclusive Trade Paperback editions, send me an email and reserve your copy today. I am planning on having the books ready to ship to any who are interested by the end of May, 2017.

All in all lots of thrills, chills, and laughs. So if you are enjoying the series on Vozcomix or through Comics Plus, here’s your chance to have your own hard copy. The deadline for ordering is May 1, so don’t delay if you have any interest. Contact me:VOZART@GTE.NET

The second volume of the Mad Mummy deals with his relationship with the mysterious and ageless Chinese doctor, and the fact his daughter,Ming Yue, is the reincarnation of Aten Ra’s (Adam Ray, the Mad Mummy) estranged wife Ahnkesenamun. While last week I explained that the 1932 Boris Karloff film, The Mummy, was my major source of inspiration for the series, another equally important inspiration was Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu stories.

MM05 Dashing to the Rescue

It's nineteenth century China and Aten Ra meets up with Sir Richard Dashing, the most decorated hero of the Victorian Age...who's also a an unrepentant womanizer, dedicated cheat and major league coward. Both Aten Ra and Dashing have to deal with the powerful and mysterious Group of Seven and the Chinese doctor who dominates the scene. Thrills, romance, laughs...a rollocking good time for all!

MM06 The Devil Doctor

Adam reunites with his friend the Chinese doctor and they reminisce about their earliest meetings and Adam’s relationship with his daughter. This one is set in Egypt back in the latex l920’s at the Tomb of the Black Ape. And some revelations about how the doctor’s elixir vitae was created.

MM07 Fires of the Devil Doctor

As their reminiscing continues, Adam and the Doctor continue their discussion about how his daughter, Ming Yue, had interfered with his plans so many times in his career…until he finally plans for her destruction. Adam has to rush to the rescue to save his reincarnated estranged wife from this horrible vengeance.

MM08 Reincarnalation

While convalescing in Egypt, Ming Yue is given a guided tour by Adam of her many past lives as he takes her back and reexamines their tenuous relationship. As all this is revealed, things aren’t going as well as planned by Adam.

While convalescing in Egypt, Ming Yue is given a guided tour by Adam of her many past lives as he takes her back and reexamines their tenuous relationship. As all this is revealed, things aren’t going as well as planned by Adam.

When I was about twelve my older cousin Robert Hiller had suggested I might be interested in reading these books. I tracked a couple down at the local library and I was hooked from page one. By the time I graduated from high school I had tracked down the entire collection of thirteen novels and read them all…most of them more than once. In the earlier books (written in 1910-17) Dr. Fu Manchu is a brilliant scientist and the head of an Asian organization, the Si-Fan, and the bane of the English empire. He was the original demented and sadistic Yellow Peril villain. Rohmer took a hiatus from the series for well over a decade, and when he revived the Doctor in the early 30’s, through his travels and experiences, the writer had a very different world view. While Fu Manchu was still a megalomaniac bent on world domination, Rohmer turned him into a much more complicated and sympathetic character. Disgusted with what was going on in the world, the man had a plan to run things better, and as long as you didn’t get in his way, things were fine. Usually it was his own daughter who would screw things up for him with her romantic notions. What a family. All in all, they were always a very fun read.

About the time I discovered the Chinese doctor, I also became friends with Fred Jackson, who showed my some of his own homemade comics he had created, and one of them featured a villain who was the son of Fu Manchu. Needless to say, I was soon emulating Fred and writing and drawing (I use the term loosely) my own comics. One of the first was called The Cursed and had Fu Manchu recruiting Dracula, Frankenstein and the Wolfman to help him in some nefarious scheme. (Hmmm…did I ever show that one of Alan Moore.) Fred also had the advantage of having seen some of the TV and film adaptations of the Rohmer material. Not having a TV I had been spared that “luxury”; I’ve yet to see a film adaptation that ever captured the character with any real understanding. Karloff was especially miscast in The Mask of Fu Manchu.

"Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government … Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr Fu Manchu.” That was Rohmer’s description of the Doctor in his first book. Later after he had travelled to Egypt he used the mummy of Seti I as a visual replica.

One of my comic book treasures as a teenager was a copy of Wally Wood’s brilliant artistic adaptation of The Mask of Fu Manchu. That was definitely source material for the Mad Mummy. Probably my first published drawings were used on the dust jacket of Sax Rohmer’s biography, Master of Villainy. When I started working in comics, one of my first assignments was drawing Chang Chi, the Master of Kung Fu. He, of course, was the son of Fu Manchu and I got to draw his old man a lot in the issues I did. Later I did my own creator owned series called Off-Castes where which featured the mysterious Ju-Tan, who was inspired by the doctor, and was modeled after Seti I. With The Mad Mummy I went directly back to the source material again, and what a guilty pleasure it was working on the series.